1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of recognition of shapes in images and more particularly to the identification of arborescent structures. The invention finds an application in the processing of digital images, especially in the medical field, for example for identification of blood vessels in images obtained by digital angiography.
There are many problems of shape recognition which can be considered tantamount to a study of arborescent structures, recognition being obtained when it is possible to cause a so-called "model" structure to correspond to an "object" structure detected in the image to be processed.
The invention has for its object a method of identification of arborescent structures in digital images. To this end, the data detected in the image on the one hand and the model data on the other hand must be represented conventionally in the same manner by a set of data which characterizes an arborescent structure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There exists a method known as the "Selkow method" described for example in the article entitled "Selkow: Tree-to-tree editing problem" drawn from "Information Processing Letters", volume 6, N.degree. 6, December 1977, which makes it possible to compare two arborescent structures by evaluating a "distance" between the two structures.